


everything in its time

by Shadaras



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24998386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: The first time Rose sees Rey, it’s in theFalcon’s guts.
Relationships: Rey/Rose Tico
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	everything in its time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



The first time Rose sees Rey, it’s in the _Falcon_ ’s guts. She hadn’t come with the intention of staring at the Resistance’s newest hero, but it’s hard to avoid looking at the _Falcon_ once you’re in the same place as it is, as far as she’s concerned. Maybe if you weren’t a mechanic, but Rose is a scrapper and at least half of the _Falcon_ ’s exterior looks like it is—or, at some point, was—literal junk.

She can’t help wandering over. It’s not that the _Falcon_ is pocked with tiny craters from debris, or that its engines look halfway blown out—not entirely, anyway. It’s also that the _Falcon_ was a legend among the Resistance, leftover from Rebellion days. Doesn’t hurt that the particular strand of legend that got attached to it in engineering spheres was more about how intensely jury-rigged it was than anything else; rumour had it that if you could understand all the _Falcon_ ’s mods you’d be able to fix anything (so long as you knew the base model, at least).

So Rose was there for the _Falcon_ , really, except that as soon as she rounds the engines (tracing her hands on their scorch-stained external guards) she sees Rey hanging upside down from an open access hatch, goggles on her eyes and skin bright and sweaty in contrast to her mud-brown sports bra. Her shirt is discarded on the floor beneath her, sand-pale and grease-stained. Rose freezes, watching, unable to place who she is even seeing for a minute.

Only when Rey says, “Dunno who you are, but can you pass me the spot-welder? It should be over there.” She indicates where with a flick of her head; it’s behind her, caught under something.

Rose is pretty sure Rey dropped it but hadn’t needed it until now. She laughs a little, embarrassed at being caught out. “Yeah, I see it.” She grabs it, hands it to Rey. Their hands brush each other, and Rose realises Rey’s not wearing gloves. “Isn’t that dangerous?” she asks, unable to help herself. “Regulations say to wear gloves if you’ve got them. Along with, well.” She lets herself look at Rey’s body—lean muscle, shadows that could be bruises or stains, a hardness Rose recognises from growing up working too hard for the amount of food she had—and sighs. Rey’s eyes are the only thing she’s covering to regulation standard. “Everything else.”

Rey snorts. There’s a wealth of information in that, especially when Rey adds scornfully, “It’s just spot-welding, I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure,” Rose says dubiously. It’s not like she’d had the proper equipment when she was first learning either, and the way Rey’s got her legs casually hooked over internal support struts like it’s completely normal tells Rose more about Rey’s history than the Resistance rumour mill has. The rumour mill’s been more concerned with the idea that she’s a Jedi, speculating that she’s Luke Skywalker’s lost child and that’s why the general’s so fond of her. She can fly, the pilots say, eyes fixed on the _Falcon_ they’ve all heard so much about.

The thing is, the most they’d heard about her origins was some off-hand comments from BB-8 about her being a scavenger and rescuing BB-8 from a terrible alien and protecting him until they met back up with his beloved Poe. _Scavenger_ , Rose thinks as she carefully positions herself to not be blinded by the spot-welder, wasn’t even the half of it. Someone who just _scavenged_ didn’t need to know the ins and outs of what she found to the degree that she can fix up a notoriously strange ship without thinking about it.

She studies Rey, trying to keep her dawning realization of how attractive she is from distracting her. Rey’s competent, too; the sparks that drift down occasionally are nowhere near Rey’s body, and there’s no acrid burning smell that speaks of accidentally welding plastic instead of metal. There’s still the blood-hot scent of metal, but there’s nothing to be done about that, and it’s almost soothing to Rose, anyway. It’s a scent that drifts around her a lot because of her job, a comforting familiarity no matter what nonsense she’s needing to solve.

A minute later, Rey flips down from the _Falcon_ , shoves her goggles onto her forehead—exposing sunburnt but clean skin in a reverse mask around her eyes—and grins at Rose. “Sorry about that. I’m Rey,” she says, clearly not expecting Rose might know who she is. Which is fair; there are a lot of people her, and no way she could know everyone or even necessarily know how quickly information about her has been passed around in the last week. Rey sticks out a hand, and—fortunately—it’s not the one holding her tools.

“Rose, one of the engineers here.” Rose smiles as she shakes Rey’s hand; it’s rough with calluses and scars both, and her grip is firm without being overwhelming. “I was admiring your ship.”

“She’s great, isn’t she?” Rey looks at the _Falcon_ with such obvious love and joy on her face that Rose smiles helplessly as well. “I wish she hadn’t been left to rust for so long. I think half of what I’m doing is just scrubbing the rust off and making sure nothing’s gonna break.”

Rose looks at the _Falcon_ ’s underside appraisingly; there’s not much rust left that she can see. “Isn’t that something the maintenance droids can help with?”

“Only if I want them to scrub holes in some of the rusted metal themselves.” Rey shrugs. “I don’t mind doing it myself.” She hesitates, scratches the nape of her neck with one hand, admits, “And, well, I know how to do it.”

Rose thinks about that for a second, weighing the likelihood Rey would see her offer as genuine versus a way of angling for power or favors owed, but she’s been part of the Resistance too long not to ask, “Do you want any help?”

“I can do it myself,” Rey says, shoulders stiffening.

“Yeah, but there’s a lot more interesting stuff you could be learning about once you get her up and running again.” Rose shrugs, hands palm-up in a peace offering. “I’ll be honest, I just want to get a look at the _Falcon_ ’s systems; everyone says they’re jury-rigged to the point of nonsensicality and work better than any other ship’s systems out there.”

Rey laughs, earnest and honest. “Fair deal,” she says decisively. “I’ll explain the _Falcon_ ’s systems to you, you explain the Resistance to me.”

“Deal,” Rose says happily, and they shake on it. Rey’s hand is warm in hers, and Rose tells herself not to linger; she doesn’t want Rey to think there’s anything else to the deal than mechanics. Even if she might be interested in something else, that’s nothing to do with a deal or a trade—it’d need to be desire alone that motivates them both for her to be okay with it. Rose had been part of too many bad “deals” in the past that she hadn’t wanted but hadn’t had a choice about, and she suspected Rey had known the same.

So she follows Rey back into the _Falcon_ ’s innards. Let this be what it is; if there’s space for more in time, it’ll bloom all the better for the time it takes to grow.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] everything in its time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28562067) by [klb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klb/pseuds/klb)




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